No-End-WWWAC-Gamers Booze and Schmooze PARTY ~ by Danielle Cyr

I attended the "No-End, WWWAC-Gamers Booze and Schmooze Party" on Thursday night, July 11, hosted by Scott Bowling of WWWAC, Greg Costikyan of Gamers Booze and Schmooze, the lovely and talented Steve Masur, of Masur & Associates (he signs my paychecks, I've got to be nice), and Steven Warren of the NoEnd list.

The festivities started at 8:00 PM and took place at Siberia, a dark, two-story club, with live entertainment in the lower level. The live entertainment was provided by Noisy-Le-Grand and Great Shakes and was fun (and loud!) and the club was filled with game and technology industry types. I first bumped into Gregor Koomey, a game designer and Kamran Ali. Gregor and I discussed the new games he's been developing. Kamran, a new transplant to the city, practiced his pitch for his company on me. Kamran works for a management company for game industry talent (www.cr-america.com but it's not up until July 23).

When I made it to the bar, I ran into Karen Sideman, whom I hadn't seen since last summer's Gamers Booze and Schmooze and who seems to be keeping quite busy with all of her game consulting clients. With her was Brian Loube, formerly of RGA Interactive, who is now a media management consultant. He jauntily handed me a pair of 3D glasses with his company info on them which can be used in conjunction with his website (if you have your own, you can go to: www.brianloube.com/3d). While chatting with Karen and Brian, I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to find the charming triumvirate of Wade Tinney, Josh Welber and Brad MacDonald all from GameKitchen (www.gamekitchen.com). Wade and I caught up on his company's recent move into new digs and Brad and I discussed his wife's bellydancing (!) career. His wife just finished a 6-month stint dancing in Las Vegas and was going to be dancing in a burlesque show on the LES that the GameKitchen folks were heading off to later that evening.

Rich Miller (or "Hellboy2000" as his t-shirt proclaimed) was the bartender and artist who kept everyone's drinks full and whose provocative black-and-white paintings hung from the walls of the club. Dolly Nielsen, Silicon Alley Station's Executive Producer, was busily taking photos of Steve Masur's band, Noisy-Le-Grand, and was standing with Robert Pollard, an information ecologist (I tried to find out what exactly an "information ecologist" was but I couldn't hear him over the music). I met Nick Fortugno of GameLab who told me that Eric Zimmerman, GameLab's founder, was in London making an important pitch. Marc Seago came over to catch up. I spoke with Barbara Anglisz and bumped into the FutureGirl herself, Lisa Rosevear (fgirl.tv).

There seemed to be a lot of optimism in the air which was a change from the Schmooze and Booze party a few months back. People seemed more relaxed and less anxious about the economy. Lots of ideas about the game industry in NYC and game design in general were exchanged along with plenty of business cards. I look forward to more frequent events geared toward the small, supportive game industry crowd in NYC. ... Danielle D. Cyr, Esq., one of our newest writers...